Face of Murder

There was another possibility, of course: that she simply wasn’t advanced enough to solve it. There was a difference between being able to see numbers—distances, dimensions, angles—and being able to solve quantum math problems. There were other skills involved, skills that other people spent their whole lives developing. Zoe might have had a gift, but she had devoted it to the pursuit of killers, not to the study of math.

Which brought another idea to her mind.

She got up, leaving Shelley still chatting with a receptionist on her cell, and carried a sheaf of photographs down the hall to the elevator. Up two floors, and down an identical corridor to the one she had left—except that the rooms on this floor had rather more power exuding from each of them.

Zoe took a breath before knocking on her boss’s door. How many times had she been summoned here, to be chewed out for losing another partner or discharging her firearm?

But this was not like those times, and she entered when bidden, trying not to feel nervous.

With his imposing frame and larger than average musculature, it was easy to see how Special Agent in Charge Maitland would have been intimidating in the field. Criminals would have taken one look at him and then run.

Zoe was trying very hard not to feel the same.

“Sir,” she said, hesitating in the doorframe.

Maitland looked up from his paperwork, then continued scrawling his signature at the bottom of a request. “Go on, Special Agent Prime. Don’t wait out in the corridor all day.”

Zoe stepped forward, letting the door close behind her with a little reluctance. She squared her shoulders, however, and faced him with the straight back she always felt inspired to uphold in his presence. “Sir, it is regarding the case Special Agent Rose and I are working on. The college kid and the professor, found with equations written on their bodies.”

Despite the large caseload which must necessarily have gone through the DC field office, Maitland didn’t skip a beat. “I know it. What do you need?”

“The equations are extremely high-level,” Zoe said, feeling a little like a failure for even admitting they were too much for her. Still, it had to be done. Eyeing the neat ninety-degree angles of everything arranged on Maitland’s desk, instead of watching his expression, she pushed herself onward. “I believe we would do better if we brought in a subject matter expert. Someone who could work on the equations from a professional mathematics standpoint.”

Maitland nodded, then paused in his writing as he realized that she was done. “Do you have someone in mind? Special Agent Rose reminded us that you studied math once upon a time.”

“I do, sir.”

“Good.” Maitland’s attention returned to the paperwork, effectively dismissing her. “Permission granted. Have the paperwork turned in ASAP.”

“Yes, sir.” Zoe turned and almost fled for the door, happy to have such a positive outcome. She was not going to stick around and wait for him to change his mind, by any stretch of the imagination.

There was work to do—and someone very important to bring into the case.

***

Zoe waited expectantly, watching her mentor examine the images.

“These are… disturbing.” Dr. Applewhite shook her head, holding her lower lip between her teeth for three seconds as she slipped the photograph to the back of the pile in her hands and studied the next one. “I sometimes forget that you have to look at this kind of thing day in and day out. It must take a toll.”

Zoe shrugged. “Dead bodies are dead. It is the not solving them that bothers me.”

“And this is one that you haven’t yet been able to solve.” It was not a question. Zoe had already primed the doctor with the fact that she needed help. Dr. Applewhite knew that it was an open, ongoing case, and that permission had had to be sought for them to even be having this conversation. She understood also that time was of the essence. With every passing hour, it became less and less likely that they would find the person who did this.

The thing about homicides was that the first twenty-four hours were crucial. Everyone knew that. Forty-eight hours without an arrest, and you were starting to head into dangerous territory. The kind of cases that would become episodes of late-night TV shows.

The college kid had been dead for well over forty-eight hours.

“I need to know what it means,” Zoe explained. “Right now, this is the only lead that we have. There does not seem to be any connection between the professor and the student, beyond the fact of their locations. No witnesses, no coverage of surveillance cameras. We have to figure out what kind of message the killer is trying to send if we are going to stop him.”

Dr. Applewhite was frowning down at the images, and she placed them beside Zoe’s notes to run through the calculations Zoe had already made.

“Your working seems sound,” she said, after a while had passed. “I can’t see anywhere else to take it that you haven’t already gone. This is extremely advanced—beyond even the level that I work at.”